INTERLINK winner of the buildingSMART award 2018

As part of a consortium, Royal HaskoningDHV has been announced as the winner of the Special Distinction 2018 buildingSMART Special Award for its application of BIM in a major international road asset management project.

Royal HaskoningDHV, as a member of the European INTERLINK consortium, was selected to win the award for its digital ways of working within a two-year research project for the Conference of European Directors of Roads (CEDR).

The project, which started in September 2016, was conceived to explore how open information management and the application of open BIM-standards could benefit the delivery and operation of road infrastructure projects across Europe by using a European Road Object Type Library (OTL).

The aim is to enable the National Roads Authorities to digitally share data and experience to improve operations Europe-wide.

Royal HaskoningDHV is now engaging with the National Roads Authorities of the 26 European members of CEDR via a series of roadshows, as well as industry representatives including contractors, academics, consultants and software developers, to share the results of the project.

Daan Alsem, project manager, Advisory Group Infrastructure at Royal HaskoningDHV said: “We’re thrilled to have been selected to win this prestigious award. This has been a significant development for our industry and it’s highly rewarding to have our work celebrated in this way.

“Our objective was to deliver an innovative approach in interoperability by linking existing open standards with the use of Linked Data and Semantic Web, which we successfully tested. Our next step will be to demonstrate this CEDR-INTERLINK approach to the European National Roads Authorities, and then begin to provide the linked data platform as a service.”

INTERLINK comprises a research institute (TNO from the Netherlands), engineering and asset management consultants (Royal HaskoningDHV from the Netherlands and ROD from Ireland), ICT consultants and software companies (AEC3 from Germany, Trimble Solutions Sandvika from Norway, interactive instruments from Germany, and Semmtech from the Netherlands), and a national BIM implementation body (planen-bauen 4.0 from Germany).

buildingSMART describes itself as a worldwide authority, driving transformation in construction through the creation of open, international BIM-standards.

The buildingSMART award organisers reported a record-breaking number of submissions for the 2018 awards. Winners were announced at the International Standards Summit in Tokyo on Tuesday 16 October.